Hearing assistance system and method

Abstract

A hearing assistance system having a first hearing device worn at a first of a user's ears, a second hearing device worn at a second of the user's ears, and an external audio source device for transmitting an external audio data stream, each hearing device having an interface for wireless data exchange with the external device, including receipt of the external audio data stream, the hearing devices being adapted to establish a binaural link between the first and second hearing devices, the hearing assistance system being adapted to estimate the quality of at least one of the links from the external device to the hearing devices. The hearing assistance system is adapted to dynamically adjust the coding of the audio stream transmitted by the external device according to the estimated quality of the at least one of the links from the external device to the hearing devices.

Description

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTIONField of the Invention[0001]The invention relates to a hearing assistance system, comprising a first hearing device to be worn at a first one of a user's ears, and a second hearing device to be worn at a second one of the user's ears, each hearing device comprising an interface for receiving an external audio data stream from an external audio source device with the hearing devices being adapted to establish a binaural data link between the first hearing device and the second hearing device.Description of Related Art[0002]Typically, the link from and to such external audio source device, such as a phone device or an audio streamer like a TV-set, is a BLUETOOTH® (BT) link which, being in the 2.4 GHz ISM band, may suffer from multipath effects, interference from other unrelated BT or Wi-Fi links and highly varying link margins, e.g., due to head shadow effects (electromagnetic radiation at 2.4 GHz can penetrate human tissue only a few centimetres before bein...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

The present invention relates to a binaural hearing assistance system that can transmit an external audio stream from a phone device to the hearing devices while maximizing battery lifetime. The system dynamically adjusts the coding of the audio stream according to the estimated quality of the links from the external device to the hearing devices to preserve the quality of the audio stream. The hearing devices communicate with each other via a binaural link to balance battery drain and enhance battery lifetime of the overall system. The invention also includes scanning modes for reconnecting a hearing device to the external device in case of link loss to minimize energy consumption.

Problems solved by technology

As the hearing devices are not paired to the neighbor's TV set, they will not be able to receive that TV set's (encrypted) audio, but unconditionally connecting to the strongest source will lead to a strange and unpredictable behavior, as physical distance to a source does not necessarily correlate with the signal strength of strongest source as well (as it usually would be for acoustic sources).

As a result, one of the two hearing device may lose the audio connection whereas the other does not even within a close proximity, or one hearing device suddenly switches to a different source while the other does not, so that each ear receives different audio content.

Generally, such behaviors are undesirable.

This results in an asymmetrical link condition, where BT communication, e.g., from a smartphone to a hearing device is possible, while the hearing device is not able to communicate to the smartphone.

Link loss can happen, for example, due to head shadowing effects or localized interference.

However, the automatic reconnect comes at a cost, namely scanning for the presence of an audio source is power and time consuming.

Furthermore, if the audio source is out of range, i.e., the link loss is permanent, the audio sink may expend a lot of energy trying to reconnect automatically.

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